How to Spend $20 Million in the Middle of the Night

How to Spend $20 Million in the Middle of the Night

As I blogged about earlier, the scene at the Monday night Cinetic party at Sundance, is likely to go down in history for many Sundance attendees. Sundance bidding wars are the thing of legend, but evidently most of the real business took place immediately following that party. By the time the sun rose on Tuesday, the films sold (for nearly a combined $20 million) included: Son of Rambow, La Misma Luna, Dedication, and How She Move. Steve Zeitchick and Pamela McClintock report the story behind the story, for Variety, about the late-night activity that went down between two (Cinetic and Celluloid Dreams) sellers’ condos:

But the events in Park City in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday illustrate just how hard it is to keep anyone in the dark at a film festival.

Nearly every bidder knew who every other bidder was, and insiders said attempts at keeping them in the dark were futile, if not downright farcical.

“It was probably the craziest night of bidding I’d ever seen,” said one buyer who has attended more than a dozen editions of Sundance, as Monday night marked the third consecutive evening of unusually intense negotiations.

Buyers would be given set times and rooms, but execs would pass each other in the hallways, wave and sometimes laugh at all the cloak-and-dagger activity.